The Four Springs Connecter trail passes four natural springs and crosses Forest Road (FR) 3 and FR 271. The trail is 8 miles long, not including the distance from trailheads Land of Pioneers trail or Los Burros trail and their junctions with Four Springs trail. I rode the trail in sections, using the forest roads as access points.

I trailered Cinnamon, one afternoon, to the junction of Four Springs trail and FR3. I parked in a wide spot beside the road and we started up the trail at 1:30 p.m. Cinnamon had lunch in the trailer, but I hadn’t eaten mine yet, so we stopped at Dipping Vat Spring — in days past, shepherds had a vat for dipping their sheep in the vicinity.

Cinnamon grazed the spring-watered grass while I sat on the edge of the concrete tank, that boxes the spring, eating my lunch. She paused between bites of grass to assess the sights and sounds in this part of the forest. When she discovered an oak branch in the grass, she chewed some bark off it. After lunch, I spent a few minutes exploring the abandoned wreck of a log cabin.

We continued up the trail past a rock-lined hole, up a hill to a single lane road which turned into a single-track trail and then we made a slight detour to Hidden Lake, a small puddle in a meadow. The trail returned to semi-developed single lane roads for another mile, then turned onto a torn-out logging road. The next mile of trail wandered through a logged area and crossed a canyon and we rode switchbacks down the slope. Climbing up the other side we found a sign claiming it was only 2 1/4-miles to Los Burros (which isn’t correct). At the top of the hill, Cinnamon helped open the gate and the trail descended into another canyon and through another gate on its way to Brown Spring — the headwaters of Brown Creek.

We found another gate as we approached Brown Spring where Cinnamon side-passed to help me unlatch the gate, then pushed it open with her nose. This gate was on a slope which made it harder to control, so she earned a treat for her gate work. Cinnamon alerted at a vehicle parked in the forest and some people wandering around near the informal camp sites at Brown Creek but we soon lost sight of them behind a hill.

The trail descended into the upper end of Brown Creek Canyon and went past Brown Spring, which is boxed in with cinder blocks and the remnants of its wooden cover on the ground downstream. After passing Brown Spring the trail climbed out of the canyon and, at the top of this hill, we found another gate. It only swung in one direction because the hinges had slipped. I pulled the gate toward us and we went around it, which puzzled Cinnamon.

A little further along we came to yet another gate, which Cinnamon negotiated very well. The bale fell off the one-directional gate so I had to dismount and repair it to make the gate stay closed. Cinnamon stood ground tied while I did it. This section was logged years earlier so the pines are much thinner and the under growth had returned. A quarter mile later we arrived at Forest Road 271, crossed it, circled the brown fiberglass trail sign and backtracked the way we’d come.

We descended into Brown Creek Canyon, passed Brown Spring and rode through the two gates. The gate on the slope tried to fall open as we rode through, but we wrangled it closed.

As we approached the top of this canyon Cinnamon suddenly stopped and stared intently into the forest at two Pronghorn bounding away through the trees. One circled left, while the other went right. We watched the Pronghorn for a couple of minutes. I had my camera in my hand, but they were moving too fast to photograph.

Cinnamon helped me with the next gate, but she was on such an adrenaline buzz after seeing the Pronghorn, she jigged and pranced for an eighth of a mile. We passed a clump of iris growing on the side of the hill under some pine trees —which is an unusual place for iris. Then Cinnamon tripped on a stick, slightly cutting herself and switched from a jig to a prance, shaking her head in a way that means, “I feel like bucking.” We compromised on going forward faster than I wanted. About a quarter mile after sighting the Pronghorn, Cinnamon settled down to an energetic walk.

When we returned to the single lane roads Cinnamon was so energetic, I put her into a rack (a single foot gait). She tried to rack so fast she was breaking to a gallop. I steadied her in the rack for about a quarter mile. When she started hopscotching between trot and rack, I slowed her to a walk. After walking a quarter mile, I asked her for a left lead gallop. She took it perfectly and galloped until we saw the road junction then she voluntarily dropped to a walk in plenty of time to make the turn onto the single-track trail. We strolled past Hidden Lake, down to Dipping Vat Spring and back to the trailer. 

By the time we made it back, it was too late to ride to Ecks Mountain.

At the trailer Cinnamon watched two dogs and a couple of people playing in the spring about a hundred yards behind us while I unsaddled. We were close to the road so I stayed close to Cinnamon to reassure her when two vehicles and a UHV came by. After the traffic was gone, I loaded Cinnamon and we went home.